Vampire Survivors Review

    Vampire Survivors has been making waves over the past few months, as it was an early access darling, turned Steam Deck darling, turned launch darling, well… it’s just a darling. The game is quite simple, it’s an action rogue-like with a top down camera view, a pixel art style, and you control your character through WASD or an analog stick. There’s no attack button, no blocks, no parries, just movement. Why is it making waves?

 

 

    The catch is, there are 40 total characters, 15 of which are secret — and all have unique abilities. Each of those unique abilities fire off automatically as your run progresses, allowing you to line up damage simply by moving. When enemies die, they drop XP, you level up and are then able to choose weapons and passives. This all sounds pretty simple until you actually have to choose said weapons and passives because certain combinations lead to evolutions — more powerful variants of the weapon in question. After your build is fully kitted, the light show begins, the damage flows, and the dopamine rushes — it’s quite an addicting experience.

 

 

    But what is the goal? Well, it’s as simple as trying to survive for 30 minutes, that’s it. Sure, there are collectables like relics and you can find areas to unlock hidden characters, but for the most part the main objective is to survive. As you survive, new stages unlock in which there are 5 main ones and multiple bonus stages and you obtain gold from each run to unlock passives that last through death. It’s the classic rogue-like snowball, but with a Castlevania vibe and in a very simple package. Let’s stop using that word simple though because simplicity done right is elegance. Vampire Survivors is just that, an elegant surprise that I’d recommend to any rogue-like fan. 

 

Rating: 9.1/10